Practical Considerations
by Queen of the Skye
Summary: They love each other and the rest is detail, but it wouldn't do to overlook the detail. Scenes from Tom and Sybil's lives together. Rating subject to change.
1. Chapter 1

I'm well aware that there are already approximately seven million "Tom and Sybil after they get married" fics and frankly I do not care. Mine will be short and questionably edited. Any plot that appears is there entirely by mistake.

* * *

So they were married now.

It was late: the wedding was over, and the little party that followed. His family and a few friends were there, and her sisters. Mary was cool and reserved, Edith visibly ill at ease, and both of them set instantly apart by their fine dresses and English voices, but they had come, and it was enough. They were gone now; they'd left on the last boat back. "Stay a little longer," Sybil had not-quite-begged, but, "Oh, no, we mustn't," said Mary, and, "We wouldn't want to disturb your honeymoon," said Edith. They kissed her on the cheek, sweet, dry kisses, before they left. "Some family," Tom said when he noticed Sybil gazing a little wistfully in the direction they'd gone, and wondering how she could be so happy where she was, and welcome the changes in her life, and still miss them so very much.

"I'm glad they came at all," Sybil said. "It's difficult for them. But it doesn't matter." She took his hand and smiled at him. "It isn't difficult for me."

So they were married now, and the party was over, and they were standing just inside the doorway of their little flat. The flat was plain and rather dingy; Mary and Edith would have thought it dismal but Sybil would not have agreed because it was _theirs_ , and who cared for dirty windows and small rooms anyway? She was in any case not in a position to notice the flat's shortcomings, or indeed anything at all except her husband, particularly her husband's hands and her husband's mouth, and the uses to which they were being put.

They had kissed before, of course, sometimes rather extensively, but they always stopped before anyone's clothing became too disarranged. (They had done exactly enough to make Sybil heartily wish they'd made it to Gretna Green, or even just taken advantage of the fully functional bed at the Swan Inn. She took some but not much satisfaction in knowing that Tom was in an even worse state than her, most of the time.) Now, though…now, there was no reason to stop.

Now there was an exciting notion.

They parted for a moment, breathing heavily, and Sybil was momentarily alarmed to discover that the chief emotion on Tom's face was not desire but remorse. "What is it, Tom?" she asked.

"It's nothing," he said.

"It's not nothing," she said gently. "Just tell me." Sybil Crawley—Sybil Branson now—was not given to catastrophizing, but even so his reply surprised her.

"I'm sorry I can't take you somewhere fine," he said after a moment's hesitation. "I'm not ashamed to be poor but I'm sorry I can't give you—"

"Don't be," she said fervently. "Don't be sorry. I swear to you it doesn't matter where we are, so long as we're together. That's enough for me."

"Oh, Sybil. Oh, my love," he said, gratitude and relief in his voice and, yes, there it was now, desire on his face. "It's enough for me too."


	2. Chapter 2

Updates will not be in chronological order, but it won't matter, because this collection has no plot.

* * *

Sybil surveyed the contents of her wardrobe with growing consternation. The problem was this: Sybil did not own any simple nightdresses, nor any simple undergarments at all as matter of fact. Well, if she had her own way, she would have, but heaven forbid the Right Honourable Lady Sybil Crawley be asked to sleep in a nightgown that was not silk, or to gird her loins in knickers lacking even one lace ruffle. It was not to be thought of, and so it hadn't been. Her intimates were a sea of fine fabrics and froth.

It was different with the dresses, of course. She had old dresses and plain dresses: a pink gingham, a purple check blouse, a brown wool skirt, her nurse's uniform. She pushed aside tea gowns a-quiver with lace and evening gowns of blue-gray silk and even her beloved old bloomer frock with its embroidery and gossamer and matching beaded tiara without the slightest twinge of regret to find the simple, practical clothes (even an Earl's daughter has need of a few) that she would take with her to Ireland and her new life. (She kept a dark blue silk for best. It was modest and subdued and she didn't expect much use out of it but you never knew, did you: once at the hospital in Kent a handful of hospital orderlies had asked a handful of trainee nurses to a dance and she'd been glad to have a fine dress then.)

So that was the dresses sorted, but undergarments remained another matter entirely. She considered one nightdress: it had short sleeves and a wide neck decorated with French lace, and it was made of clinging silk so soft and fine and sheer that she might as well be naked, wearing it.

The thought gave her pause, and she allowed herself for a moment to imagine herself in that dress, and Tom's eyes on her. Now there was a warming thought.

If she had married Larry Grey, or one of her other suitors, or indeed anyone at all except Tom, she would have had a trousseau any princess might envy: silk and satin and fine cotton batiste, and more lace and ruffles than a laundress's worst nightmare. Nightgowns, corsets, camiknickers. A peignoir set in peach or pink or mauve, if she could get Mama to agree to it. ("Lingerie doesn't have to be white!" argued Sybil, passionately, age 14. "Yes, it does," said the Countess of Grantham, putting an end forever to young Sybil's dream of a lime green petticoat.) And all of it packed into trunks with labels on them for Paris or Rome or Geneva.

Sybil did not regret the laden trunks or their alluring contents. There were a number of reasons for this but one, of course, overshadowed all the others. She was an innocent, of course, but not so innocent as to not know that a honeymoon was more about taking clothes off than about putting them on. When she contemplated that with, say, Larry, her stomach turned. When she considered Tom, well…

Her sisters were unmarried. Her maid was married, but with Anna's husband in jail on murder charges Sybil did not think her questions would be either welcome or appropriate. Her mother was tolerant in a strained, tight-lipped sort of way and was in any case not the person whom Sybil would prefer to ask.

She packed the silk nightgown, and hoped (not for the last time) that the coming weeks would pass _quickly_.


	3. Chapter 3

Three weeks.

That was how long they were obliged to wait: three weeks, or three Sundays to be precise, while the banns were read so that anyone who cared might know that when Tom Branson and Sybil Crawley wed, it would be with every blessing law, church, and custom could bestow, and the blessings of family too. Sybil was overjoyed that they could marry with her family's approval, however grudging it might have been, and Mary and Edith had promised to come to the wedding. Still, three weeks sometimes seemed a long time, especially when she considered that they might have been married already if they'd made it to Gretna Green. She was the one who insisted on turning back so she did not bring it up, but she thought about it. A lot.

Three weeks was also a long time to live with Tom's mother. "She thinks we're very foolish," Tom had said, and if Sybil's future mother-in-law was never less than polite, she also never made any attempt to conceal the fact that meeting Sybil and seeing the two of them together had not altered her opinion in the slightest as concerned the foolishness of their union. Sybil, for her part, resolved to be unfailingly cheerful and unendingly polite, and to accept willingly every scrap of advice (housekeeping, childbearing, dress and conduct and manners, though she did admit that Sybil's governess-trained deportment was very nearly decent) that Mrs. Branson chose to give. Tom was also endowed with two sisters, both of them already married. The younger one lived in the country with her husband, but the other one lived in Dublin and visited her mother often. Elaine Murphy was clever and sarcastic and Sybil liked her a great deal.

Tom stayed with a friend for propriety's sake. Once Sybil jokingly pointed out that they had been living under the same roof for some time already, but they had chosen to do this _properly_ in every sense of the word. ("Serves you right," he'd joked in return. "Three weeks is nothing. Try five years.") After a week he moved into the flat that would be theirs when they married. It straddled the line between squalid and shabby but Sybil was willing to overlook that because it was cheap and more importantly it was _theirs_. (Papa would give her an allowance that was sufficient if not ample, but they agreed that they would rather not live off her family's money unless it were absolutely necessary. It was therefore imperative to rent a flat that could be paid for by the combined earnings of a nurse and a reporter. "Between squalid and shabby" was the best they were going to get, and Sybil would not dream of having it otherwise.)

So they lived apart, as was only proper, but every night he came for supper, and afterwards they went for walks and _that_ was the strangest and most wonderful thing because they could simply be together. She could hold his hand and kiss his cheek on the street and as far as any onlookers were concerned they were only young sweethearts, no more and no less. (He could pull her into an alley or a shadow and kiss her properly, and that was the most enjoyable thing of all.)

Three weeks passed, but they passed _slowly_.

* * *

I'm trying to get through this with as little research/effort as possible, but I must credit Wikipedia for explaining how banns work, and probably all original characters will be named by my choosing at random from among my Irish coworker's Facebook friends.


End file.
